Lori Watlamet can’t hold back tears when she talks about the looting of an old Native Indian village site in the Pacific Northwest’s Columbia River Gorge. In May, with a reporter in tow, the law enforcement officer walked over a bluff that protects the site from plain view and her heart sank. Watlamet, a member […]
Communities
Posted inSeptember 25, 2000: Backyard boom
Truth-telling needs a home in the West
Brothers is a store and a highway rest stop 43 miles east of the New West boomtown of Bend in central Oregon. It is also home to some of the most shocking roadside markers we saw in 3,600 miles of Western travel this summer. After days of reading highway signs that painted the surrounding area […]
Posted inSeptember 11, 2000: Holy water
New developer thinks big
UTAH An unlikely company is proposing to build what most developers can’t – a dense community in an area where large homes and large lots are the norm. Kennecott Utah Copper Corp., which has mined copper in the Salt Lake Valley for almost 100 years, plans to build 12,000 homes, apartments and condominiums and 4 […]
Posted inSeptember 11, 2000: Holy water
The Wilderness Awareness School
The Wilderness Awareness School, based in Duvall, Wash., teaches animal tracking, storytelling and the art of mentoring. Classes for the national program are scheduled in several locations including Washington and California, as well as Vermont and New Jersey, from Sept. 22 to Nov. 5. Write to P.O. Box 5000 #5-137, Duvall, WA 98019 (425/788-1301), or […]
Posted inSeptember 11, 2000: Holy water
Holy water
The Catholic Church seeks to restore the Columbia River and the church’s relevance to the natural world
Posted inSeptember 11, 2000: Holy water
Excerpts from the pastoral letter draft
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. We offer here a pastoral reflection, derived from Christian teachings about creation and ecology developed over the ages from their biblical origins. We speak with the voices of faith and compassion, and ask those with greater scientific and social expertise to enter into dialogue […]
Posted inSeptember 11, 2000: Holy water
On the path to a greener church
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. An organization with as much heft as the Catholic Church, and with 2,000 years of history, does not move quickly or simply. The Columbia River Basin pastoral letter, scheduled for release in November, has been five years in the making. But even five years […]
Posted inSeptember 11, 2000: Holy water
Ski town workers find homes in the hills
Squatters say camping on public land is the only affordable option
Posted inAugust 14, 2000: Meth invasion
Environmental education takes a ride
With only a bike to call his home, Mike Kahn is on a mission this summer. He wants to educate children about nature and the environment – while he pedals almost 4,000 miles from California to Maine. Kahn is the former office manager for Environmental Volunteers, a nonprofit group based in Palo Alto, Calif., and […]
Posted inAugust 14, 2000: Meth invasion
After Lewis and Clark: Explorer Artists and the American West
The journals and paintings of four artists, including George Catlin, who explored the Rocky Mountains after Lewis and Clark, will be featured at the Sun Valley Center for the Arts in Ketchum, Idaho. After Lewis and Clark: Explorer Artists and the American West is on display until Sept. 29, and then moves to the Boise […]
Posted inAugust 14, 2000: Meth invasion
Meth invasion
America’s drug of the moment wreaks havoc in the rural West.
Posted inAugust 14, 2000: Meth invasion
‘There’s not much to do out there’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Erec Hopkins, 20 years old, is serving a year of work release for third-degree sexual assault. He works 6:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. four days a week at the Whitman County shop, where he assists in maintaining county vehicles. When he’s not on work […]
Posted inAugust 14, 2000: Meth invasion
The makings of a meth lab
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Mike LaScoula makes sure I correctly write down the following quote: “Not everyone associated with meth is a dirtbag,” says the Spokane County Health District’s chemical and physical hazards adviser, “but they are all dumb asses.” To prove his point, LaScoula takes me to […]
Posted inJuly 31, 2000: Out of the darkness
Saving some of Utah
In early June, a coalition of environmental groups completed a three-year, $2.5 million fund-raising effort to protect a historic ranch tucked deep in northern Utah’s Wasatch Mountains. The privately owned ranch provides habitat for elk, mule deer, moose and sandhill cranes, and several historic trails traverse the ranch’s 7,300 acres. But the property is only […]
Posted inJuly 3, 2000: A river resurrected
Red Mountain tries to hang on to history
Locals want to put an abandoned mining district in public hands
Posted inJuly 3, 2000: A river resurrected
Heard around the West
Yes, they look freaky, some of them, but on the whole they’re peaceable and just want to see old friends and hang out – sometimes, it is true, while sampling controlled substances. They are the Rainbow Family of Living Light, a loosely affiliated group of ’60s-style hippies who gather for a week once a year […]
Posted inJune 5, 2000: Change on the Plains
Shakespeare in Montana
Montanans are proud of the state’s world-class trout streams, abundant elk herds and their ongoing love affair with Shakespeare. Hang around bars, billiard halls or restaurants across the state and you can easily strike up a conversation with the locals on which of the bard’s plays and characters rings true to their heart. Shakespeare was […]
Posted inJune 5, 2000: Change on the Plains
Painting the prairie
Crowded Prairie: Four Painters, an exhibition at the Ucross Foundation Art Gallery in Ucross, Wyo., features 34 paintings by Karen Kitchel, Chuck Forsman, John Hull and James Lancel McElhinney. “Each (painter) has something to say that is very serious about the environmental impact of our technology on the land,” says Gordon McConnell, curator of the […]
Posted inJune 5, 2000: Change on the Plains
‘A natural calamity’
Through historical and eyewitness accounts, scientific analysis and amazing photos, Rob Carson’s Mount St. Helens: the Eruption and Recovery of a Volcano, takes us back to the blast of 20 years ago: “By the evening of May 18, Mount St. Helens was a smoking crater, hollowed-out and grey. It looked defiled, like the victim of […]
Posted inMay 30, 2005: Write-off on the Range
Starry Eyes
Recently, at mid-afternoon on a rainy day, I looked up at the cloud-burdened sky and missed the stars. Truly missed them. I felt the kind of wistful pangs that you might feel when remembering a long-gone but beloved grandparent, or a teenage sweetheart who once misunderstood you. I knew they were up there — the […]